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I'm not sure I would say it has nothing to do with reality; that's up to SpaceX to decide. The premise suggested in the post, extremely briefly, is that, becaus

by nbadg 6y ago

I'm not sure I would say it has nothing to do with reality; that's up to SpaceX to decide. The premise suggested in the post, extremely briefly, is that, because Starlink would be a global ISP (which, to my knowledge, basically doesn't exist today), having much stronger encryption on the network would help them avoid needing to comply with a patchwork of differing legal frameworks across the world. Put simply, a truly global ISP exists in a fundamentally different regulatory and legal landscape than traditional ISPs, and the easiest route for them would be simply to sidestep them all by having provable anonymity. I'm not sure how that premise fares in relation to the actual legal reality of operating a multi-jurisdictional ISP, but that's the premise, and I think it's plausible enough not to dismiss it out-of-hand.

oh_sigh 6y ago
What about jurisdictions with laws that you aren't allowed to intentionally design your system to obscure or forget information that may be relevant to a legal investigation?
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  Yeah they wouldn't be allowed to do this in lots of countries.
jcims 6y ago
The only fundamental thing that’s different is that SpaceX doesn’t need to build the infrastructure in-country. Subscriber relationships are going to be the same, and all of the regulations surrounding commercial operations are going to apply. If SpaceX can’t legally operate commercially in any locale then it seems incredibly unlikely that they will try. The satellites know where they are and their phased array antenna will know approximately where the terminal is, especially if gps is embedded or they do multilateration of a signal with multiple satellites. This also is the big problem with the post, the satellites will be doing lots of beam steering to maximize throughout and minimize latency. Flooding the entire area underneath them with a single signal would severely impact service. That said, they will almost certainly have to implement some or all of these controls in support of military operations.

by nbadg 6y ago

oh_sigh 6y ago

What about jurisdictions with laws that you aren't allowed to intentionally design your system to obscure or forget information that may be relevant to a legal investigation?

ShamelessC 6y ago
Yeah they wouldn't be allowed to do this in lots of countries.

jcims 6y ago

The only fundamental thing that’s different is that SpaceX doesn’t need to build the infrastructure in-country. Subscriber relationships are going to be the same, and all of the regulations surrounding commercial operations are going to apply. If SpaceX can’t legally operate commercially in any locale then it seems incredibly unlikely that they will try. The satellites know where they are and their phased array antenna will know approximately where the terminal is, especially if gps is embedded or they do multilateration of a signal with multiple satellites. This also is the big problem with the post, the satellites will be doing lots of beam steering to maximize throughout and minimize latency. Flooding the entire area underneath them with a single signal would severely impact service. That said, they will almost certainly have to implement some or all of these controls in support of military operations.